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No arm to guard me from Oppression's rod, My will subservient to a tyrant's nod! No gentle hand, when life is in decay, To soothe my pains, and charm my cares away; But helpless left to quit the horrid stage, Harassed in youth, and desolate in age! But I was born in Afric's tawny strand, And you in fair Britannia's fairer land; Comes freedom, then, from colour? Blush with shame!
Actions receive their tincture from the times, And, as they change, are virtues made or crimes. Thou art the State-trap of the Law, But neither can keep knaves nor honest men in awe. Thou art no shame to Truth and Honesty, Nor is the character of such defaced by thee, Who suffer by oppression's injury.
"Ye sons of mercy! yet resume the search, Drag forth the legal monsters into light; Wrench from their hands oppression's iron rod And bid the cruel feel the pains they give!"
"We come from slavery's grave unbound, And mountains and the vales resound With songs of jubilee. Ascending from Oppression's night, Behold the dawn of freedom's light! Soldiers of God, arise! The enemy will rue this day, For victory's eagle scents the prey And onward quickly flies. To arms! to horse! my comrades brave! And let the battle-standard wave, For now is honor's day.
True is the oracle we read: 'Those who have sown oppression's seed Reap bitter fruit; their souls, perplext, Joy not in this world or the next. The brothers of my murdered boy, Who could a father's hopes destroy, An equal punishment will reap, And lasting vengeance o'er them sweep. They rooted up my favourite tree, But yet a branch remains to me.
"By oppression's woes and pains, By our sons in servile chains, We will drain our dearest veins But they shall be free! Lay the proud usurper low; Tyrants fall in every foe; Liberty's in every blow; Let us do or die!" Gavin sprang from his bed and flung on his clothes madly.
Inured to suffering, to the lash, to oppression's crushing heel, he dare not dream of a painless future, of a quiet, peaceful sleep at life's end, nor has he the divine audacity to invent a new world wherein the misery and slavery of his present existence will be impossible, where all his tyrants will be dead, where he shall taste of sweet freedom and become himself a god.
BURLEIGH. The judges? How now, madam? Are they then Base wretches, snatched at hazard from the crowd? Vile wranglers that make sale of truth and justice; Oppression's willing hirelings, and its tools? Are they not all the foremost of this land, Too independent to be else than honest, And too exalted not to soar above The fear of kings, or base servility?
No arm to guard me from Oppression's rod, My will subservient to a tyrant's nod! No gentle hand, when life is in decay, To soothe my pains, and charm my cares away; But helpless left to quit the horrid stage, Harass'd in youth, and desolate in age! "But I was born in Afric's tawny strand, And you in fair Britannia's fairer land. Comes freedom, then, from colour? Blush with shame!
O ye loved ones, that already sleep in the noiseless Bed of Rest, whom in life I could only weep for and never help; and ye, who wide-scattered still toil lonely in the monster-bearing Desert, dyeing the flinty ground with your blood, yet a little while, and we shall all meet THERE, and our Mother's bosom will screen us all; and Oppression's harness, and Sorrow's fire-whip, and all the Gehenna Bailiffs that patrol and inhabit ever-vexed Time, cannot thenceforth harm us any more!"
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